


Over and Over Again

by When_the_Day_Met_Night21



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, also holy shit his worst fear is losing gert wbk, basically a chance for me to write in Chase's pov again cuz it's easy for me lol, that teaser fucked me up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 07:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20042485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/When_the_Day_Met_Night21/pseuds/When_the_Day_Met_Night21
Summary: Based on the S3 teaser featuring Chase and a certain nightmare prompted by an asshole alien keeping him hostage that turns out to be a neverending cycle.





	Over and Over Again

**Author's Note:**

> Okay wow so, I finally wrote something again. I cannot believe it's been close to a year since the last time (last December right before S2 was released) but at least I finally did it. And I'm actually pretty proud of how this turned out I think. Idk. That 22 second teaser was all the inspiration I needed apparently, even tho I've been trying to work on other different ideas for months now. lmao Oh well. Enjoy?

_What the h-_

At first everything around Chase feels like a blur to him. His head is in throbbing pain and he’s trying to remember where he’s at right now.

_“That’s not any alien in there… That’s Jonah.”_

Chase can hear his mother’s voice on repeat faintly as he looks up at the ceiling. This is not his room at the house he grew up in. It’s the Hostel, and he’s in a bed. _Their_ bed. Or it was…

_What is going on?_

The last thing he can remember is a beam of light coming towards him and his mother at the hands of Jonah, inside the body of his father.

How is it that he’s at the Hostel right now? It doesn’t make sense, this isn’t-

There’s a whimper, one that Chase can recognize anywhere. Gert. He turns slightly and is rewarded by the sight of purple hair. She is there beside him, sitting upright with her hands wrapped around herself and her legs crossed. She looks to be in deep thought, her eyebrows furrowing as she bites her lip.

Chase’s first instinct is to reach out for her. Without thinking, he rests his hand on her wrist gently. “Gert? Are you okay?”

He watches as Gert shifts his way and her eyes grow wide. “Chase? What are you- “

Chase frowns, still very much trying to wrap his head around what is going on. Is this really happening right now? Gert seems as if she has no idea how he got in here.

_Well, that makes two of us._

Their eyes stay locked for what feels like ages, and while it is entirely awkward, it’s also the best thing ever in Chase’s honest opinion. As he lets himself get lost in the moment, he can’t help but recall their last words to each other.

_“Some of us didn’t even need a drug to destroy our connection.If you ask me, getting rid of my memories sounds kinda good.”_

_“Then I… I guess we’re done here.”_

_“I’m certain of it.”_

The words still cut like knives as he replays the memory over and over. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since his failed meeting with the others earlier that day.

Wait… is it still the same day? Chase glances at the clothes Gert is wearing. She has on her orange sweater and sweatpants that he remembers she wore the night Topher came into their lives. Her hair is slightly unkempt, and she isn’t wearing her glasses. He looks down and sees that he’s wearing pajamas also. It appears to be a fresh new morning.

But it also must be a dream, he tells himself.

It doesn’t feel like it though. Now that he’s here alone with Gert again, she appears to be very real. The ever so curious look in her eyes. His hand still touching hers. Actual human contact.

If this is a dream, Chase doesn’t want to wake up from it.

“Chase…” Gert turns her hand over so that she’s linking it with his. Her lips curl up. “I’ve missed you.”

The sentiment catches him off-guard. “You have?” No way that’s the first thing that Gert would say to him. So, it is a dream, but it is certainly a nice one.

_Might as well enjoy it while it lasts._

“Mm-hmm.” Gert scoots over so that her head is lying against his shoulder and sighs.

“I missed you, too.”

Chase slips his free arm around her shoulder and allows himself to forget that if this was real life, things would be going down much differently between them.

“I was so mad at you… Truthfully, I still am.” Gert looks up at him, and there Chase sees the sadness he’s been feeling inside since he left the Hostel. He prepares himself for the inevitable mood change. Dream or not, he knows that if Gert did see him again, they wouldn’t be cuddling like this. She would already be in the middle of a full-on tirade berating him for leaving all of them and calling him a traitor, and he would have no leg to stand on.

“I know.”

“Why did you leave us?” Tears swell up in Gert’s eyes, but they don’t fall. “Why’d you leave _me_?”

“I- “

_“You’re a coward.”_

Gert’s voice echoes and the pain of that last night comes back full force. He wants to apologize to her like he knows she deserves. If only he can summon the words. He couldn’t at the meeting in the woods. There hadn’t been time, and he knows that it wouldn’t have changed anything. He’s the outsider now, after all. Then again, he always had been of the group.

Everyone has their place in it. Alex - the brains who brought them all back together in the first place, Nico - the reluctant leader with an awesome magical staff, Molly – the one who was beyond being just the muscle, Karolina – the owner of alien powers that still none of them could fully comprehend, and Gert – the one connected to a _FREAKING_ dinosaur!

What did Chase bring to the table, really? Beyond having a pair of fistigons that weren’t always a reliable option?

_They don’t need me. They never did._

“You’re better off without me. You don’t need me.” He pauses as he stares down at Gert. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, though. I hate myself for doing that.”

It’s a dream, after all. It’s easier to say the things you’re scared to out loud when it isn’t real.

“Is there anything I could have done to make you stay?” she asks.

Had there been?

“_Forget it, Chase. I could argue with you. I could make a scene. I could scream…_ _cry. I could give you a point by point rebuttal, and none of that would matter because you want to go. And if that’s how you feel, then that’s what you should do… Go.”_

That last word repeats discordantly, and Chase tries to will the memory away. But of course, this is all in his head and the dream continues.

“I don’t know, Gert.”

He wants to believe that he would have done things differently if given the chance. Maybe if he had waited a day or two before going, he could have explained his side of things better. But as Chase thinks about it a little more, he wonders if him leaving had been unavoidable.

Yes, he had left because of his father’s call (or had that been Jonah’s doing?), but that doesn’t change the fact that Gert had been right too. He had been afraid. He still is.

“I really am sorry.”

Chase reflects to himself briefly. If this really is a dream, he doesn’t _need_ to be afraid. He can say what he wants to, the one thing he couldn’t let himself say to her when they were together.

“Gert, I love you. I was scared to tell you before.” He watches as she gasps before smiling and thinks about how much he wishes this was real. “I should have told you, but I couldn’t.”

Gert places her hand over his heart. “It’s okay. You’re telling me now.”

Chase moves his hand on top of hers. He knows that this is all a fantasy, but he can’t help but enjoy the brazen look that Gert is giving him. What he wouldn’t give to see her this happy in real life.

“I love you, too.”

They both start to lean in for a kiss, but suddenly Chase hears a faint ringing in his ear and groans as everything goes white for a moment.

When he comes to, Chase notices that there isn’t much change in scenery. He’s still in the Hostel, this time right at the open door of Gert’s room. Also, he’s wearing his coveralls for some reason. Disheveled, he stumbles to his feet. He can feel blood dripping down his neck, but he’s distracted by how the place has been noticeably trashed by someone.

_Oh no…_

The first thing Chase spots is Nico and Karolina lying on the floor with Nico’s head resting against Karolina’s leg. They almost look like they’d fallen asleep there by choice, minus the fact that they’re on the dirty ground and covered head to toe in blood and dirt. He turns in a different direction, and, through hazy vision, spots Alex in another corner, passed out against the wall.

Through jagged breaths, Chase chokes out “Oh no” as he takes another step forward. He then turns his head as he hears a cough. It’s Molly, resting along the stairwell railing with Old Lace’s head perched on her lap. She appears weak as he swiftly makes his way towards her. “Save Gert,” she just barely makes out, looking nearly on the verge of collapse.

In that instant, Chase hears both the best and worst sound in the world. Gert’s voice. But it’s coming out terrified. “Put me down! Let go!”

When Chase looks over the railing, what he sees almost makes him crumble.

“_Someone help me_!”

Gert is being carried by the parents, who are wearing their red PRIDE sacrifice ritual robes. They’re carrying her towards one of their boxes that is glowing and clearly about to use her as a sacrifice.

“Let her go!”

“Chase?” Gert cries out as she looks up at him before she is lowered into the box.

_NOOOOO. _

He quickly realizes that he is wearing his fistigons, prepared to fight. No way Chase is gonna let this ritual go through. Gert is not going to die on his watch. He comes rushing down the stairs as he notices the box has been shut. He thinks back to the time when he and the other kids witnessed the sacrifice of Destiny and knows that his window of saving Gert is most likely pretty small here.

He must try though.

Without any clear target, Chase lunges and light beams come flying out of his fistigons. Once he makes it to the box though, the glowing from the box has stopped and he looks to see the smiling faces of the parents. In front, he sees his father who he wonders briefly is actually supposed to be Jonah. “It had to be done, my boy.”

Chase brings up his fistigons again, ready to attack the smirking man, but then there’s that same ringing sound from before and he recoils. Everything is white again.

Until it’s not anymore. He wakes up to find himself back in the place he started from before.

_No way…_

Chase takes in the scene before him and it is exactly what he feared. What happened before just reset itself. This wasn’t a typical nightmare.

The others are exactly where he had found them last time. He walks towards Molly who tells him to save Gert again and that’s when he hears Gert’s shouting.

This really is happening again. He is about to witness Gert’s death. _Again._

But maybe this time he can save her. He tells himself that he just needs to be quicker.

Except he’s still not fast enough to get to her in time even though he heads straight for the box, parents be damned. He is unable to open it and the light from the box fades.

He has failed.

“Try again,” a voice says.

And so he does. Again and again. Chase begins to lose count of how many times he has done this. A hundred, maybe? It feels like more. He is growing weaker each time he does it. Until one time he finally can’t get up from his spot. Maybe if he waits out the loop and does nothing, it’ll stop. Or at least give him time to rest before attempting it again.

After all, this is still a dream… right?

Chase is starting to doubt that this is true. It’s almost like he’s time traveling and can’t leave until he fixes what is wrong. At least he watched a show once where that was a thing.

He needs to save Gert. But how? No matter what he does, he doesn’t get there in time.

In that moment, Chase hears a whisper. But it must be in his head, because it’s Gert. “_Come on, Jockstrap, you can do this. Just do something that you haven’t done before. Clearly running is not getting you anywhere.” _There’s a laugh._ “Isn’t insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?”_

She’s right.

There is something that Chase hadn’t tried before because he’s been afraid of messing with the box while Gert is still inside of it, but then, none of this is real. So, why not?

The loop resets and this time, Chase slowly but confidently gets up and makes his way over to the railing. He throws out his arm and launches a shot at the box. He holds his breath as the glowing stops abruptly and after a second, there’s banging from the inside. “_Let me out!_”

That’s all the motivation Chase needs to make his next move. One by one, he knocks the parents down with blasts, saving his father for last. He then makes his way to the box and is eventually able to open it after a final blast from the fistigons.

There she is. Gert. Frantic and petrified, but alive. “Chase!” She flings her arm around him, out of breath. “Thank God…”

“I was so scared I wouldn’t ever be able to save you.”

He closes his eyes, savoring every second of this embrace with her. He needs it so badly, to know that she is still very much here.

Except…

The ringing sound, he can hear it softly coming back.

_No… I did everything right this time. This can’t be happening. It can’t reset. It c-_

But it does.

He’s back where he started. Chase doesn’t understand. It should have worked. Isn’t the goal to save Gert? And yet, here he is back at square one.

He needs to wake up from this dream. That’s the only solution. He closes his eyes and tries to will himself to not be asleep anymore. Doesn’t work. He tries again and still nothing.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Wow, you humans really _are_ slow with the uptake, aren’t you?”

Chase spins around to see the figure of Victor Stein, standing beside where Karolina lay with Nico. He takes a disapproving look at the sleeping girls. Clearly, this is Jonah. “Karolina’s being just as senseless as you are in her dreamscape over this one,” he says with a nod towards Nico. “Have you learned nothing? You can’t win.”

Chase takes a step forward as if to challenge the man before him. “What the hell are doing to me, you asshole?! You’re making me watch my ex-girlfriend die on repeat? That’s sick...”

Victor – or Jonah, God this was still so confusing for Chase – smiled with a shrug. “I actually didn’t have to do much, really. I just programmed the Algorithm to show you your worst fear. It’s because of you that it’s like this.”

“What?”

“You are currently in a healing chamber and this is all a simulation.” He looks as though he can tell that Chase wants more answers than that. “In other words, I’m preserving your body until you’re no longer needed.”

“What?!” Chase lifts his fistigons. This is not happening.

“You realize that none of this is real,” he pauses as he raises his hand, which begins to glow, “and that, I’m the one holding all the cards, right? Don’t be so stupid.”

Chase lowers his arms to his side, feeling foolish.

“I understand why your father has always seen you as a disappointment now.”

Flinching, Chase changes the subject. “You mentioned Karolina before. You’re gonna kill your own daughter?”

Jonah shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s inferring. “Now there’s no need to be so dramatic. I’m simply teaching her a lesson for disobeying me. Why she would choose to stay on Earth with you idiotic humans instead of going home with me and her family where she belongs-“

“_We’re_ her family, not you.”

“Well,” Jonah sneers, “that’s a bold statement for someone who abandoned his supposed ‘family’ for his blood. It’s sad how easy it was for me to convince you to come back. All I had to do was tell you that poor old Dad’s days were numbered.”

Chase feels an enormous surge of anger run through him. “You piece of shit- You have no idea what you cost me-“

Jonah surveys the room around him and looks at the other occupants of the room. “I think I can wager a guess.” There are distant cries that are growing.

_Oh no. _

The cycle, which had seemed paused when Jonah appeared, seems to be starting again. “Put me down! Let go!” Chase walks over to the railing and there she is again, being carried to her deathbed. “Someone help me!”

Jonah appears at his side. “Well, it looks like you’ve got your hands full. But just know, your days are numbered. Enjoy your little hell.”

And with that, he disappears. Chase barely has time to process when the loop resets, until he’s back on the ground and it’s time to start all over again.

Everything goes back to being a total blur. Consciousness. The screams. The failure. Rinse and repeat. Now that Chase knows there’s no escape no matter what he does, he stays in his spot on the ground and tries to block out Gert’s cries for help. It’s driving him mad, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Finally, he makes his way into Gert’s room and gets into the bed. He smiles sadly as he looks at the familiar comforter and he lays his head down on the pillow. He shifts so that he can smell it, just to see if he can somehow manage to get a whiff of Gert’s shampoo. He can, and it’s a bittersweet thing. In this dream state of his, he can’t save her. And in real life, she hates him. The girl that he loves hates him so much that she wants to forget that they were ever together.

Not to mention, he’s going to die soon if he’s not saved.

Chase thinks about the situation. The others will come looking for Karolina. He is certain about that, especially if Nico is calling the shots. But he wonders, would they save him? It feels obvious that they would, but at the same time, Chase can’t find it in himself to blame them if they do choose to leave him behind.

_Karma, right?_

He shuts his eyes, knowing that his time in this bed is limited before everything resets again. For a moment, Chase contemplates whether it would be so awful if Jonah did kill him now. If only so this torture comes to an end. He lays a little longer, anticipating the ringing that always leads up to the reboot, but it never comes.

_Hmm. That’s odd._

There’s a throat clearing, and Chase opens his eyes. It’s Molly, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She’s uninjured and clean.

_What the-_

“Chase, what are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Chase sits up, suspicious. Maybe the cycle has changed. “Are you… _real_?”

“Of course, I am. It’s me!” She sighs, regrettably. “We don’t have much time for this.” She looks around at her surroundings. “Whoa, Chase. What is all of this?”

Chase waves his arm around. “Welcome to Hell, basically.”

Molly glances in the direction of her unconscious fake self. “Wow, that Jonah guy really is a piece of work.” She faces Chase again. “But it’s okay, if you hurry with me now, we can get you out of here. Nico was able to knock him and Stacey out, but I don’t know how long they’ll stay like that. She was lucky to convince Tina to make it so I could come in here.”

“Did you get Karolina out yet?” Chase gets up.

“Yes,” Molly replies, looking like she doesn’t get how he could possibly know about that.

“Good. Jonah said he didn’t plan to hurt her, but I didn’t believe him honestly.”

“So now it’s your turn. And then I guess you can try to talk to your mom, if you want, to get her out of her-“

Chase is taken aback. “What did you say?” he asks, taking a step forward.

“Yeah, your mom? He put her into one of these tube things too.”

“No…”

How this thought never occurred to him before, he doesn’t know but then, he’s been very distracted. Suddenly, he hears the shouting that he’d been hoping that he would never have to hear again.

Molly's mouth opens wide as she turns and follows the noise. “Oh my God, Chase, is that…”

“Yes.”

This is supposed to be over now. And yet, it isn’t.

Molly comes back into the room. “This isn’t real, you know." She points in the direction of the sounds downstairs. "That isn’t really Gert.”

“I know that.” He clenches his jaw. “Doesn’t mean it hasn’t been killing me inside every time it happens.”

“This has happened before?” Molly gapes at him in disbelief.

“I can’t even remember the last time I counted. It’s been more times than anyone should be able to take.” He can tell the tone of his voice has shaken the younger girl. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Molly hesitates but then shakes her head and sighs. “Look, we’re all still pissed at you, but we need to get you out of here, okay?” She pauses. “Gert’s missing.”

“WHAT?”

“We lost each other when Dale and Stacey were following us, and she never came back to the Hostel…” Chase can tell she’s trying to keep it together. He knows she’s already considered the possibility that Gert was taken and mind-wiped. “We hoped that maybe she was here with you guys, but…” She stumbles at the end. “Chase, I can’t lose her. I need to find Gert. I can’t lose my sister!”

“I know,” Chase says, summoning all the positivity he can muster. He places a hand on her shoulder. “And you won’t. We’re gonna find her, okay?”

“Okay,” Molly nods.

_Gert, I’m gonna save you. I promise._

"Now, let's get the hell out of here."

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it?? Plz leave me feedback cuz I'd love to hear it! heh


End file.
